Hall: Public education stranded on the side of the road

George buys a car with a 16-gallon gas tank that gets an average of 25 miles-per-gallon. He and his business partner, Al, make a regular rural trek that's 375 miles with few gas stations in between. No problem, because the car should get 400 miles on a single tank of gas with no worries.

But instead of filling the tank, George puts only 12 gallons in the tank, runs out of gas 75 miles short of the destination and now sits stranded on the side of the road.

Clearly, George says, it's the car's fault. The car is broken. After all, it's supposed to make it 400 miles on a tank of gas. Then there's the gas station. They must have sold him inferior gas because had the gas been high quality it wouldn't have stranded him 75 miles from his destination.

Al is indignant at George's excuses. This is all George's fault. George doesn't need a new car, Al explains; he simply needs to put enough gas in the tank. But George won't have any of Al's righteous anger. The reason George is driving is because over several years of Al driving the two only ever finished their trek twice. Al was failing, and it was time for George to step up, take control and lead.

He led them right back to where Al had led them time after time — stranded on the side of the road.

Republicans don't want to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program because the formula is broken. It's broken because our schools are still struggling, so the formula must not be working. Of course, the formula has only ever been fully funded twice in its entire existence, but we'll continue to ignore that troublesome little fact for a while.

But can we stop ignoring the fact that in the four years Republicans have controlled the entire Legislature and the governor's mansion — not to mention the 10-plus years prior to that when Republicans controlled the Senate and the governor's mansion — they have made no serious effort whatsoever to develop a formula that meets their definition of working? Because there's only so long you can be in charge of what you say is broken before it is solely your fault for not fixing it.

Which leads me to the Democratic leaders…

Lose the self-righteous anger over Republican leaders not fully funding MAEP. The length of time Democrats controlled the state's purse strings far exceed that of Republicans, and yet Democrats fully funded MAEP only once. The second time was under a split Legislature with a Republican governor.

The self-righteous anger is so laughably hypocritical that no one has stopped to point out how many of the three budgets that included MAEP former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove signed fully funded education. (A one-armed man could lose four of the only fingers he has and still count that high, if you are wondering.) Musgrove, of course, is suing over the lack of full MAEP funding.

And we don't need a Constitutional amendment to tell us to fully fund MAEP. We already have a state law that says we must fully fund it. What we lack is a Legislature with enough men and women from both political parties who honestly care enough about public education to do the right thing.

I'm not even saying the right thing is fully funding MAEP. The right thing could be coming up with a new formula and fully funding it. Short of that, however, fully funding what state law says they should fully fund would be the right thing — at least for now.

Here are a few things that won't help public education, however:

1. Passing a bill that changes the name of Common Core to the Mississippi College and Career-Ready Standards but does little else. Now, that will help politicians win points with voters, but it won't help students or teachers.
2. Passing a bill that would institute $10,000 fines for teachers simply emailing their legislators from school when other state laws and policies at most districts already prohibit teachers and administrators from undertaking political activity on school time or with school resources.
3. Vilifying administrators when any teacher in the world will tell you that without a strong, independent and focused administration schools will fail. Examples of administrative excess may exist, but that doesn't make administration as a whole unnecessary or inherently wasteful.

In case anyone is wondering, there is no magic bullet for successful schools. All of them at some level face the same challenges of politics, funding and personnel.

But for now, George and Al are still sitting on the side of the road blaming each other for failing to do something that is ridiculously simple — fill the car up with enough gas to get where you are going.

Contact Sam R. Hall at srhall@jackson.gannett.com or (601) 961–7163. Follow @samrhall on Twitter. Read his blog, Daily Ledes, at clarionledger.com/blog/dailyledes.